The support of Patrice Amar, a 56 -year -old magistrate, denounced on Wednesday during his disciplinary hearing, “political revenge” of the Minister of Justice, intended to “destabilize the PNF”.
Le Monde with AFP
No disciplinary sanction was claimed on Wednesday, September 21, against the first vice-prosecutor at the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), Patrice Amar, one of the magistrates referred to by disciplinary proceedings following the administrative surveys requested by the Keeper of the Seals, Eric Dupond-Moretti.
The Director of Judicial Services (DSJ), Paul Huber, asked, on behalf of the Prime Minister, to the disciplinary training of the Superior Council of Magistrates (CSM) to say that Mr. Amar had committed “faults” Disciplinary, but “that there is no need to pronounce a sanction”. The CSM will put its decision under deliberation after the defense pleadings.
“political revenge”
The support of Patrice Amar, a 56-year-old magistrate, denounced during his disciplinary hearing “a political revenge” of the Minister of Justice, intended to “destabilize the PNF”.
Shortly after entering the government, in July 2020, the Keeper of the Seals had ordered administrative proceedings against three magistrates of the anti -corruption prosecutor’s office, including Mr. Amar and his former chief Eliane Houlette, for a controversial investigation carried out on the sidelines of A file involving Nicolas Sarkozy and his lawyer Thierry Herzog.
PNF’s investigations aimed to flush out a possible taupe having been able to inform the ex-head of the State that his phone was listening in this dossier nicknamed “Bismuth” and had led to peel the telephone statements (the “fadettes “) From tenors of the bar, including Eric Dupond-Moretti. Denouncing “Barbouzes methods”, he had filed a complaint which he had withdrawn as soon as he was appointed to the Chancellery.
It is for having notably triggered surveys against these magistrates that the Minister of Justice is indicted for “illegal taking of interests” and threatened with a trial before the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR ).
Denunciation mail
The administrative investigation exempt Patrice Amar from any disciplinary failure. But Matignon, who has since recovered the files which Eric Dupond-Moretti had to divest himself to avoid any conflict of interest, had passed over and had grasped the CSM.
Patrice Amar is notably prosecuted for having, in a letter addressed in January 2019 to the General Prosecutor of Paris, criticized in “voluntarily offensive” terms her ex-boss Eliane Houlette, blaming her “incompetence” and “conflicts of interest “.
After this letter of denunciation, the financial prosecutor had been “cropped” by the general prosecutor and “exfiltrated” a few months from the PNF. “The pronouncement of a sanction in regard therefore appears disproportionate,” said the director of judicial services on Wednesday.
M
me ahead, the first chief of the anti -corruption prosecutor’s office, retired since summer 2019, will appear in front of the CSM on Monday and Tuesday.